The Serious Healer: Developing an Ethic of Ambiguity Within Health Professions Education

Abstract

Ambiguity is inherent to medical practice. Developing an ethic of ambiguity within health professions education is necessary to help learners succeed within the uncertain landscape of medicine, and practice patient centered care. In her book ‘The Ethics of Ambiguity’, Simone De Beauvoir proposes character types that humans may subscribe to. As individuals embrace freedom, they progress through problematic character types and move towards genuine freedom. For De Beauvoir, the existential stance of becoming a genuinely free person is the highest attainable character and involves recognising how one’s own freedom is related to the freedom of others. Within this chapter, we discuss the relevance of De Beauvoir’s work in relation to health professions education, proposing that many health professions students and trainees embody the character of the ‘serious person’. A pedagogy of ambiguity is discussed, through which trainee healthcare professionals may come to take responsibility for their own values and ethics and embrace the ambiguous nature of healthcare practice. In current health care education, ambiguity and uncertainty are already emphasized as something that trainees ‘also’ have to learn, but this pedagogy places ambiguity at the heart of professional development, thereby integrating ambiguity within health professions education at a formative stage of student development.